Sales is a lucrative profession. Great salespeople profit immensely from their skills and companies are constantly searching for them.
Here are 8 best practices anyone in sales can can follow to become outstanding in their profession.
8 Best Practices For Salespeople
- Always be honest. Most people prefer not to buy from someone they feel they cannot trust. Trust can be lost faster than gained, and a definite way to fail in sales and relationships is to be dishonest. As has been said in many different ways, the end is near when dishonesty enters a relationship.
- Increase self-awareness. Know your personality and how it affects others. Becoming adept at reading other people’s personalities will help you adjust yours to help them feel more comfortable interacting with you.
- Listen, listen, listen. How well a salesperson listens has been proven to dramatically affect success. It takes concentration, patience, respect, hard work and an intellectual and emotional effort to be a good listener. It pays well, and in conversations, what most people want is to be understood and acknowledged rather than listen to someone else talk too much.
- Understand people’s fears. Fear is an emotional response that can prevent a sale from taking place. By understanding a potential buyer’s fears, it will help you address their concerns and remove them.
- Focus on customer’s needs. When potential buyers understand they need what you are selling, the chances of you making a sale increase. When they believe you understand their needs, the chances of you making a sale increase even more. At that point, if they feel comfortable with you, you should be able to complete the sale. Unfortunately, salespeople often make the mistake of talking about themselves and their company too much. Truthfully, what consumers want is to buy products or services from people they feel good about that satisfy their needs. A great sales approach usually focuses on satisfying a potential buyer’s needs.
- Repeat, repeat, repeat. Psychological studies have shown people trust a concept or strategy more after they’ve heard it at least three times. Also, people only remember about 10% of what they hear. Without being redundant, a successful practice is to introduce an important point at the beginning of a sales presentation, explain it more in depth during the middle of the conversation, and then reinforce it at the end. By harmoniously repeating important points in a tactful way, your important points will be remembered.
- Always reflect positive energy. This may be hard at times, but positive people are usually liked more by others. Being nice while showing kindness and appreciation pays off a great deal more than the opposite. Being negative can be expensive. Keep this quote in mind: “People may not remember what you say or do, but they will never forget how you make them feel.”
- Make your processes easy on customers. Sometimes life is hard. So is business. Companies who have easy processes and salespeople who go out of their way to make things easy on customers are usually rewarded with loyalty and repeat business. Often, when purchasing processes are difficult, consumers look to buy from someone else.
Focus On Becoming Great
The 8 best practices outlined above formulate a solid foundation for becoming great at sales. There are other best practices that have to do with pleasantness, effort, techniques and intelligence, but focusing on becoming great at these 8 best practices will help a salesperson improve quickly.
Keep this in mind – we’re always learning during sales or any other profession. Stay positive, act with integrity and always protect your reputation. If you focus on becoming great as a commitment over time, you will reap the lucrative benefits of being great at sales.
Having owned an advertising magazine in Utah, I’ve worked in marketing for over twenty years.
I started writing for MediaFast in 2014. The first time I held one of their video brochures, I thought something like, “Wow! This blows away our magazine and any other print advertising I’ve ever seen. This is like a TV commercial, and I’m holding it in my hands. Amazing!”
Since then, video brochures, video mailers and video boxes have become leaders in marketing performance. It’s a privilege to write about them. I also love MediaFast—with its top-notch product quality, industry leading customer service, and all of the wonderful people I get to work with.
